


Empathy

by Ginncide



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 07:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6792985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginncide/pseuds/Ginncide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryou tries to empathize with the spirit of the ring, and they form something of a bond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empathy

**Author's Note:**

> To me, tendershipping has always been less about Bakura treating Ryou like shit and then feeling bad, and more about the two of them mutually learning to live with each other. They're both stubborn as all fuck, and parallel each other. Ryou loves ghosts and shit, so I think he'd try to get along with his own.

Empathy

em·pa·thy  
ˈempəTHē/  
noun  
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

 

Ryou always thought he’d suffered from having too much empathy. Ever since he was young, he’d always ask, ‘but why did they do that?’. It was a pain for his parents to explain that sometimes people were just evil, and that’s how it was. But that never really sounded right to him. There always had to be a reason, didn’t there? Even if that reason was just that they wanted to.

So maybe he and the spirit of the ring got off on the wrong foot. Ryou had naturally been outraged at what the spirit had done to his friends, as anyone would be. And had later only seemed to hurt him. And Ryou was too upset to think about it any deeper than ‘I need to get rid of him’. But since he knew he could never get rid of the ring, he’d have to learn to live with anything that came with it.

So that brought him back to how he was as a child. Why had the spirit gone out of his way to trap his friends’ souls in those dolls? Surely, it was for no other reason than to torture him. But, maybe it wasn’t? Maybe it genuinely was the spirits twisted way of trying to appease him.

Huh.

Ryou thought maybe he could try to talk to him. Understand him.

So, he sat cross-legged on his bed, set the ring neatly down on a chair across from him, and tried to figure out how to talk to the spirit inside of it.

“Uh… Hello?” He tried.

“Oh god, what am I doing? For all I know this spirit isn’t even real, just some hallucination of mine.” He flopped back down, staring at the ceiling.

“So… Spirit. If you are real, I’d like to talk to you. I know we didn’t exactly start off great, but, I think maybe if I can understand you, then…” He rolled over, laying on his side.

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m lonely, spirit. Maybe I’m tired of being so afraid of you, afraid of getting close to anyone in case you come back and hurt them. I’d like to know why you do what you do. Or who you are, at all.” He let out a long sigh.

“Whatever. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk. I’m not even sure what I'm doing. Lying down, talking to a hunk of metal. Hoping for a ghost to come tell me they want to hurt everything I care about. Maybe you were destroyed after that game, but then why do I still feel like you’re there…?”

The ring continued to not respond.

.

.

.

Just as Ryou began to doze off, a bright light filled the room, blinding him. Ryou looked over, and a semi-transparent doppelganger sat on the chair.

“Mm, so you are real.” He greeted, simply.

“I didn’t think you’d be so quick to forget. You hurt me, host.” The doppelganger replied sarcastically.

Ryou chuckled. “My bad, then. So, what’s your name?”

The spirit did a double take. His name? He’d been expecting an attack on his existence, yelling, screaming, struggling, not this.

“Ba… Bakura.” He answered, a bit of confusion in his tone.

“That’s funny, that’s my surname. You can call me Ryou, then.”

“Ryou…” Bakura seemed no less flabbergasted.

“Mm-hm.”

“So, what do you want, host? Have you come to tell me to go away? Still upset about what I did to all your precious ‘friends’?” He sneered, shaking off his confusion. He’d rather get to the point. He had plans to think about.

Ryou took his time sitting up straight, looking at the spirit head-on. “I want to get to know you.” He answered simply.

“Get to… know me?” Bakura had no words and no idea how to respond to this. He looked in Ryou’s eyes, and knew he was telling the truth. The room went silent.

“Why?!” He demanded.

“I know I said all kinds of things about you before, but I’ve been thinking, ‘maybe there’s more to him than I gave him credit for?’. ‘Maybe doing that to my friends really was a strange, misguided way of trying to pay some sort of debt?’ ‘Maybe if I tried to understand him, things would be different?’ Things like that. So… I want to learn more about you.” Answered Ryou.

“You really are a strange person.”

“Something like that.”

…

…

…

And so, Ryou had a long, long conversation with Bakura. Bakura wasn’t a saint, that he knew, but he wasn’t so far gone he was beyond saving. He seemed to feel genuinely sorry for hurting Ryou as he had in the beginning. He didn’t care much for anyone else, but as long as his host was safe, that’s all the companionship he needed. He refrained from telling Ryou about his plans, in case this really was an elaborate plan to thwart him, but later decided it would do no harm to explain his motivation to Ryou. In exchange, Ryou promised not to tell. He decided he’d rather watch the fight between him and Yugi play out without his interference.

And so they formed something of a bond. It would never be the perfect synch that Yugi had with the Pharaoh, but it was best they could do. Bakura found he’d really missed having someone close to him. Thousands of years with only a demon to talk to really left one thirsty for companionship. Yet Ryou was not his ally, nor Yugi’s. He refused to be a pawn to fate. Merely a spectator. Even if it meant he would get hurt no matter who won.

They struck up a deal, of sorts. Ryou would have control during school hours and with time to do homework as well as take care of himself. Bakura had freedom to wander at night, as well as enact any plans he had, as long as nobody was injured too badly. It worked for them.

When Marik came along, it was no big deal. It was a logical alliance. Up front, Bakura had one condition: He would do whatever Marik said until he was done with his plans, and he would not involve Ryou. He was not to hurt him, or ask him to do anything. Marik was certain if he looked at the boy the wrong way the deal would be over. Marik found Bakura’s attachment to be a weakness. In the plan to have Bakura hurt himself as an opportunity for Marik to get close to Yugi’s friends, Bakura had protested greatly. “Ryou has a very low pain tolerance,” He’d said. “Wouldn’t it be better to fake illness?” He continued. But Marik won out in the end. 

Much to his dismay, Bakura was forced to have control for the entire tournament. It wasn’t fair to his deal with Ryou. He told Ryou to sleep. He’d be safer that way. Not to mention, Ryou did not trust Marik in the slightest and outright refused to talk to Bakura if he was there. Ryou had been far from happy when he found out about the guest in their headspace.

Bakura was not happy when Marik suggested to use Ryou to get out of the lost duel.

“Why?” He demanded. Much angrier than he showed.

“Because he won’t hurt his friend.”

It made enough sense to Bakura, so he did it. He switched places with Ryou.

Ryou was overwhelmed. By pain, by confusion, by sensory overload. He collapsed, trying to make sense of what was happening. He was scared. He cried out for help. People tried to approach him, but could not. It was all just noise.

His pleas went unanswered, and he sat, in agony and confusion, panting and trying to get a grip on what was happening.

It pained Bakura to watch this. But he held onto the hope that that Yugi would forfeit. Minutes passed, and Bakura wasn’t sure if Yugi would do it.

“I need to step in, Marik, I need Ryou, and I can’t risk his health!”

Inside their mindspace, he whispered to Ryou, ‘You’re going to be okay.’.

He took over once again, and stood up, feigning malicious intent, and goaded Yugi to attack him.

The pain was unbearable. But he could endure it. Once the attack subsided and the duel ended, he switched back with Ryou, allowing him to feel the comfort and safety of his friends.

After everything died down and they were left in quiet darkness.

Inside their mindspace, Ryou was still unsure of what had happened, but one thing was for certain- Bakura had saved him. Bakura had also most likely gotten him into the situation in the first place, but he put the blame for that onto Marik.

He walked over into Bakura’s half of their space for the first time in weeks. Opening the door, he was immediately assaulted with the sounds of arguing.

“If you’d just left him out there for another minute, we could have had it!” Marik shouted, clearly unpleased.

“You don’t know that. The pharaoh might have found the fate of the world to be more important than the health of his friend who, might I add, he doesn’t pay enough attention to to know when he’s not in control!” Bakura threw back, clearly just as agitated.

They went back and forth more, and Ryou finally found the courage to go inside. Walking quietly up to the pair, Ryou stood by. They seemed to notice him at the same time.

“Ryou, are you okay?” Bakura immediately shifted his attention to Ryou, putting his hands on his shoulders, searching for any sign of the boy being in pain.

“I’m fine. I… I don’t know what was going on, but, thank you for saving me.” Ryou looked up at Bakura, assuring him that he felt fine. As a soul, anyway. His physical body, however, could use some time off.

Bakura kept a hold on Ryou, more for his own concern than Ryou’s safety.

.  
.  
.

Bakura tried his best to free Marik, but in the end got all of them trapped in the darkness.  
Bakura could not be destroyed, as he WAS the darkness, and did everything in his power to keep Ryou relatively safe.

They were there for a long, long time. Time didn’t flow normally, so their time spent there seemed to last for eternity, but also an instant.

Bakura apologized to Ryou, and Ryou forgave him. He understood, even if he did not approve. He couldn’t change who Bakura was, so the best he could do was empathize with him.

“I wonder if we’ll be here forever.” Mused Ryou.

“I’m sure your friend will free all the trapped souls.” Bakura could have returned to the ring with no trouble, but he had to keep Ryou safe. The rest were trapped in perpetual nightmares. He couldn’t submit Ryou to that, even if he wouldn’t remember it if he woke up.

“But if he doesn’t? If we wander the darkness forever?” Ryou pressed.

“Why not hold onto hope like all your friends would do?”  
“I’d rather prepare for the worst than be disappointed.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“It makes being close to you much easier, if that’s what you mean.”

“Meaning?”

“If I expect you to murder everyone I love at all times, it makes you seem a lot nicer.”

“I wouldn’t break our agreement.”

“I know.”

“If it makes you feel any more optimistic, it’s much nicer being here with you than being alone.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

.  
.  
.

“I can’t protect you like you do for me, but if I can make you feel less lonely, that’s good enough for me.”

“You’ve already been more than reasonable, don’t you think?”

“How so?”

“Consider putting up with me payment enough.”

.  
.  
.

“Bakura?”

“Yes?”

“Can you teach me to be strong?”

“Where did that come from?”

“I want to be able to protect you, and everyone else I love. I can’t stand in your shadow forever. One day, I want to save you, too.”

“You’ve already saved me.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“I’m not.”

“Even now, you’re protecting me, aren’t you? You could return to the ring if you wanted to. I want to be your equal, someday. I don’t want to be hurt and afraid anymore. I want to be strong.”

“I think you’re already strong.”

“But-”

“After so many years of being alone with only a piece of a demon, I’d forgotten how to be anything but angry. I’ve met many hosts in my day, but only you’ve had the strength to talk to me. To befriend me. Not be afraid to stand up to me. I don’t have that kind of strength. All I have is darkness.”

“Bakura.”

“What is it now, Ryou?”

“I’ll give you all the kindness you need and more.” Ryou reached out his hand and placed it over Bakura’s, interlocking their fingers.

Bakura couldn’t think of anything to say.

In the pitch blackness of the void, two halves of the same soul sat in silence, dwindling on the unspoken words.

'I love you.'

**Author's Note:**

> Might add more later, probably not tho. Kinda ran out of steam and meant to have it go all the way to the end of the series but decided to leave it on a better note.


End file.
